Loop (23 page)

Before I could stop him, Finn jumped down onto the tracks.

“What are you—?”

“Come on!” He held out his hands. The express lights glinted like a strobe now, and I could see a speck approach in the distance. But Leto was closing in, too. I hopped down, and Finn and I raced to the other side. He pushed himself up and lowered his arm to lift me.

As my feet scrambled against the ledge, Leto reached the other side.

“Twenty-four hours!” yelled Leto as Finn hoisted me up the rest of the way. “Not a minute more!”

“And then what?” I was feeling a little more bold and a lot more angry with those tracks between us. “You’d really attack me with that thing over something that cost you practically nothing?”

I wasn’t sure if I was referring to the woman or the weapon, not that it mattered.

“Nah, of course not,” he hollered over the roar of the approaching train. “I’m going after your mother.”

The express bulleted through the station, but the sound was nothing more than a hollow ringing in my ears. I caught glimpses of Leto through the passing train cars, that sick smile stuck to his face. Terror rooted me to the spot, and I would have stayed there all day if Finn hadn’t pulled me along with him as he sprinted down the stairs.

At the bottom of the far exit, we jumped in an empty Pod and he said, “Central Infobank: Go.”

“Stop,” I said. The Pod lurched to a halt. “Saint Raphael’s Research Hospital: Go.”

“Stop.”
Screech.

“Go.”
Squeal.

“Stop!” Finn stared at me for a few moments as we sat there at a standstill. I couldn’t tell if that last command was aimed at the Pod or me. “What are you doing?”

“I have to get to my mom.” And do what exactly? I was no protection against Leto. And while a tryst to the Infobank might slip ICE’s notice, there was no way I could skip school and walk into the hospital without getting caught.

“Bree, I don’t know what’s going on, but we don’t have much time. This is our one chance to access your mom’s records. You said so yourself.”

“I know.” I clutched my head. He was right. I had to approach this rationally. Leto didn’t have anything to gain by attacking my mother today. His best-case scenario involved trapping me to become his little time puppet. Still, I didn’t want him anywhere near her. I tapped my speak-eazy.

“Connect me to my mother’s nurse at Saint Raphael’s.” I waited for him to answer. “Yes, this is Bree Bennis. The last time I visited, my mom seemed a little worn-out. No visitors until further notice.”

He changed her status, and after we disconnected I calmed down enough to say, “Central Infobank: Go.”

“You wanna tell me what that was about?” Finn asked once we’d started moving.

“Not really.” I yanked a wig out from my bag, the one Mimi had used after the witch-burning incident. I figured a little disguise wouldn’t hurt. Although now I wished I’d thought of it earlier. Plus, it would be easier to separate out the stolen strand from the fake ones than from my real hair.

“That man was chasing us, Bree. Chasing us. With weapons. Still want to convince me you’re not in danger?”

“His name’s Leto. And the situation’s under control.”
Liar.
“I have something he wants. I just need to figure out a way to get it back to him.” I tried to straighten my wig, but my hair slipped out the back.

“It’s that phone thingy, isn’t it? The one you left in Chincoteague.”

“It’s junk. But, yeah, it belongs to him. Look, let’s get to the Infobank, figure out how our moms knew each other, and then you’re going on your merry way. You won’t need to worry about me anymore.”

“Ha!” Finn adjusted the wig and tucked away stray strands. “You think I’m going anywhere now? Fat chance.”

“But you promised.”

“I made that promise before I knew about this Leto guy.” Finn swiveled my shoulders so he could fix the back of the wig. He pulled something sticky from my back. “What’s this?”

It was a compubadge that said: “Tink.”

“It’s—”

“Don’t say ‘nothing.’ I’m tired of
nothing.
I already know it’s not your nickname.”

“It’s short for ‘Tinkerer.’”

“What does that mean?”

“Tendril Tinkerer. Someone who tries to modify their chip or turn it off.”

“Why would someone do that?”

“People have their reasons.”

“Why would someone think
you’d
do that?”

“Not me, my mom.” The tattered photograph floated to the surface of my mind. “Well, maybe me. It’s complicated.”

“Bree”—he gripped me by my shoulders—“talk to me.
Please.
”

“I … I can’t.”

“I don’t understand this whole chip thing. It’s so intrusive. Controlling where you go and appeasing nonShifters aren’t good enough reasons to have a microchip implanted in your head. I mean, Shifting can’t have changed that much in two hundred yea—”

“We go insane, Finn!” I lowered my head and my voice even though there was no one around to hear. “The mutation in Shifters’ genes that allows us to travel through time eventually mutates further and causes a Madness. The chip prevents it. That’s the real reason for the chip.”

“Since when?” Finn backed away as if the insanity was contagious.

“It’s one of those time conundrums. Right after we went public in the Early Years, about a half century ago, some of the Shifters from the future—from past this time, I mean, from
my
future—showed up talking crazy. Claiming events from the past were wrong. It wasn’t even big stuff, just things that didn’t add up, things that didn’t make sense.” I leaned back in the Podseat and started to chew on a piece of my hair until I remembered it was a wig. “So Quantum Biologists
quietly
investigated the phenomenon and discovered that there was one thing that separated the normal Shifters from those crazy ones.”

I tapped the base of my skull.

“Your chip.” He traced his finger along my scar.

“Somehow by allowing us to control where and when we Shift it prevents the Madness. It was so soon after Shifters had come out of hiding, they weren’t sure what the difference was exactly. One hypothesis is that the Buzz eventually leads to psychosis, so by stopping the Buzz they stopped the Madness.”

“Well, when did this Buzz thing start?” he asked.

“What do you mean? You had it back in your time.”

“No, we don’t. Shifting doesn’t cause my dad pain.” He shrugged. “Or Georgie.”

“Of course it does. Maybe they just suffer in silence.”

“Georgie made Mom take her to Urgent Care last week after she got a paper cut.”

“Well, maybe…” But I didn’t have an explanation. What he said didn’t make any sense. Of course they had the Buzz. That’s why we were forbidden to speak with Past Shifters. I waved it aside. Finn didn’t know what he was talking about. “That’s all beside the point. The Buzz is only one hypothesis of what causes the Madness.”

“You should have told me already. Why is it some big secret?”

“Shifters knew it would be catastrophic if word got out.” I shook my head. How could I make him understand? “When Shifters came out of hiding, it wasn’t an easy transition. Most nonShifters didn’t trust us, and really, they didn’t have reason to. We’d been lying and hiding to that point. The rest saw opportunity—wanted us to do their temporal bidding. Imagine how those same nons would have reacted if they found out that these people they already feared were going to go cat-poop crazy? Hysteria.

“So they offered the microchip to any Shifter who wanted it. The thing is, we discovered the Madness right after Shifters came out of hiding. No one really knew what was normal for Shifters. They probably all eventually developed the Madness but just kept it hidden along with their existence. We decided to do the same. We told the nons the chips are for safety and control, things that are good anyway.”

“The chips aren’t required then?”

“No. But of course everyone scrambled for them the moment they were available. Only a few Shifters have refused chips. The cracked ones.”

“Cracked for wanting to be free?”

“No, literally insane. It’s already started, Finn, the first signs of mental incapacitation. There’s a special convalescence home for them, and that’s where … that’s where they’ll send my mom if I can’t pay her hospital bill. That’s why today is so important. Shifters already think she was showing the first signs of the Madness with all that Truth gibberish. But if I can prove she was in her right mind, then I might be able to find another option for her.”

“Why didn’t you tell me all this before?

“I couldn’t. The Rules we have, they exist to protect all Shifters, present and future … and past. If your dad knew about this disease—if any Shifter from the past knew—what do you think he’d do? He’d freak out. When we found out about the Madness, Finn, I can’t even tell you how bad things got. Shifters refused to have children, afraid they’d pass on the gene and doom future generations. Some attempted experimental surgery to have their hippocampus removed. It was horrifying. We weren’t just facing the Madness. We were facing extinction.”

“So only Shifters know about this?”

“And a few select nonShifters. People in authority like Bergin—my headmaster—and transporters to a certain point. They know to report any symptoms of confusion or dementia.”

“Wow.” Finn dug his fingers through his hair. “But how does all this fit in with your mom? Why would people think she tampered with her microchip if they knew what she was risking?”

“I can’t talk about it. Not right now.” Not with Finn. “Will you trust me?”

Finn nodded, but from the look on his face it took something strong within him.

The Pod stopped at the Central Infobank. I’d never actually been there. It wasn’t what I expected at all. I double-checked the address. We were in the right spot. The building itself was small and unobtrusive, two-story red brick with vines crawling up the sides, off Lincoln Park. A single sign marked the entrance, clear words against an etched-glass door. I opened it, an old-fashioned push one like mine at home. Mom would have loved everything about this place. Except the reason Finn and I were here.

When we stepped inside, it was like stepping into a different world, a modern one. The interior had been gutted and was all glass, floor to ceiling. One room. There was a single worker manning the operation. He looked to be around Mom’s age. He sat on a clear stool behind the clutterless counter, also clear, flipping through a holo-paper. His hair was shaped into such a precise buzz that I wondered if he programmed his clippers to go one strand at a time. Two tufts of hair turned up at his temples. He gave the distinct impression of an owl on a perch.

The wall behind him shimmered and sparkled like a million-faceted diamond. A bell tinkled as Finn and I made our way into the room, but the man didn’t glance up from his reading.

“Hello?” I said.

Again, he didn’t look at us or say a word but held out one bony-fingered hand. When I didn’t move toward it, he said, “ID,” in a reedy, disinterested voice.

“Of course.” I unwrapped the stolen strand of hair from around my thumb and held it against my scalp. This was my last chance to back out. He tapped a round, upraised portion of the countertop.

“Scan,” he said.

“Thanks.” I leaned my head down and carefully held the wig back as I brushed the hair on top of the scanner.

A soligraphic screen shot out of his desk at an angle so that only he could read it. I turned away so he couldn’t get a good look at my face in case a picture of whichever staff member’s hair it was came up. But he barely looked at the screen or me.

“Welcome back,” he said in an absent tone.

“Thanks,” I said uncertainly. “I’d like the Shift record for, umm, Poppy Bennis.”

He touched a seemingly random spot on the desk and repeated my mother’s name. Behind him, a pinprick lit up. The light zigzagged across the wall and grew larger and larger until it stopped in the exact middle, where I recognized it as a data button, only bigger than any data button I’d ever seen before. An inch wide, but almost a quarter inch thick.

Mr. Personality touched another spot on the desk, and a hole formed in the wall directly in front of the data button. He pulled the button out, walked back to the counter, tapped yet another spot, and punched a few boxes on the info screen. That’s when it hit me: The sparkling wall behind the attendant was the actual file archive. Each sparkle, a separate disk, buried layers and layers deep. The glass wall to his left was composed of three separate booths, all with opaque glass doors. The attendant laid the button in the center of the counter and turned back to his holo-paper.

“I hope you find what you’re looking for in the file this time, Miss Quigley.”

chapter 20

SHARDS OF GLASS SLID DOWN
my throat as I tried to draw a mouthful of air.
I can’t breathe. I can’t breathe.

I’d never hyperventilated before but was pretty sure this was it.
Quigley had accessed my mom’s file.
Owlie might as well have reached over the counter and slapped me. It would have jarred me less. I mean, yes, there was all that
I’m-watching-you
stuff at the Pentagon earlier. She’d given me the willies in class the other day. And the faceless whisperer in the locker room might have been Quigley.

No. It
must
have been Quigley.

“It certainly didn’t take her mom very long to figure things out. The last thing we need right now is to clean up another mess like that.”

My mom must have discovered something, something she wasn’t supposed to. Quigley had attacked her to shut her up, had put her in a coma somehow. And now Quigley thought
I
was after the same information. I looked up at the huge shimmering wall. Maybe I was. But I didn’t even know what I was looking for.

A high-pitched squeal filled my ears. I looked around before realizing it was my own wheezing breath. Finn snatched the button off the desk and heaved me up by my armpits. He half-carried me over to one of the booths before the attendant had a chance to question us. Or remember what Dr. Quigley looked like; namely, not a sixteen-year-old schoolgirl.